Field
The present disclosure relates generally to fiber optic cable sub-assemblies and methods of assembling and, more particularly, to fiber optic cable sub-assemblies including a collar attached to an end portion of a metal strength member of a cable and methods of assembling a fiber optic cable sub-assembly with a collar.
Technical Background
Fiber-optic cables are known for their ability to transmit data at higher data rates than electrical cables. With the increasing demand for high-speed data transmission for consumer electronic devices (tablets and laptop computers, digital cameras, video cameras, or the like) optical fibers are starting to be used for data transmission in these applications.
To this end, fiber optic assemblies for consumer electronic devices need to be terminated in a robust manner that allows them to operably connect to the electronic devices over a large number of mating/unmating cycles. For example, many consumer electronic devices have electrical ports for establishing an electrical connection with an external device that support data rates of 5 Gb/s or more. To support these higher-speed applications, active optic cable (AOC) assemblies are emerging that allow the use of the optical fibers as the transmission medium between electrical connectors instead of copper wires. In these AOC assemblies the electrical signals at the first connector are converted to optical signals for transmission along the optical fibers and then converted from the optical signal back to electrical signals at the second connector and vice versa. In other words, the AOC assembly has electrical connectors on each end for the interface connection with the respective devices and one or more optical fibers in the cable for transmitting data between the electrical connectors.
When attaching fiber optic cables to connectors for creating the optical cable assembly, care must be taken to preserve excess optical fiber length in the cable to avoid axial load that may cause undesired deformation resulting in tension of the fiber and potential attenuation and/or physical harm to the cable assembly such as pulling the optical fibers from the ferrule. Conventional fiber optic cable configurations for telecommunication applications are known to employ various types of strength members such as aramid yarns, fiberglass yarns, glass-reinforced plastic rods or the like as the main strength members of the cable. One or more optical connectors may be attached to an end of the fiber optic cable to form an optical cable assembly (i.e., a fiber optic cable attached to an optical connector) and the strength member are secured to the optical connector for providing strain-relief. However, these conventional methods of strain-relieving optical connectors to fiber optic cables in telecommunication applications typically are not suitable for cable assemblies used with consumer electronic devices due to the large number of mating/unmating cycles and the given footprint of the electrical connector.